So you want to get paid

This week I am speaking at the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Solo & Small Firm Conference on “Getting Paid”. If you follow our firm on Twitter this week (@andriessenlaw) you’ll find all tweets this week are related to the topic of getting paid. Some of the tweets are lawyer specific, but most are for every business.

It appears even Taylor Swift is chiming in on my “you deserve to be paid” mantra this week. Ms. Swift, rightly demanded that Apple pay artists for using their songs, even if Apple had made a business decision not to be paid for providing those songs for three months. As soon as she spoke up, Apple agreed to pay the artists for their work.

In order to get paid by a client/customer, a business needs to behave as if it expects to get paid. This is done by having procedures in place from the start of the customer relationship that make it clear this is a business, not a volunteer relationship.

Providing a written statement of what you will charge and when you expect to be paid is a good starting point. Once you have done that and the customer has agreed, if they try to change the terms in the future, you can always refer back to your starting point and remind them what they agreed.

Remember: if you do the work or provide a service, you deserve to get paid.

I could go on and on about this topic, and will at the Conference. If you would like to follow up more on how to get paid, feel free to reach out to me: I’m full of really good ideas on getting you paid, including threatening to write a nasty Top 40 song about the non-payer. Oh wait, that would be Taylor Swift’s go to strategy, not mind.